Tuesday, October 30, 2007

As I walked around doing my much delayed grocery shopping today, I noticed that the gaze of a multitude of people often landed at my midriff. It was weird. I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Not a midriff baring one, mind you. I never went down that path, not even in '01 when the Britneys and Christinas of the world were championing it. So what was up? I hadn't eaten anything so it was impossible that something had spilled there. Did I wear my shirt inside out? A quick touch at the back of my neck indicated other wise. Maybe it's just my paranoia working in overdrive, I thought.

Then the shop boy at the butcher stall grinned and said, "Nice shirt."

***This is a reminder of how my general awesomeness translates to really awesome attire. You may glance in awe and cower at the feet of my awesome shoes. That is all.***

---

I'm not really a fashion forward kind of girl. Not counting groceries and food, I haven't paid full retail price in a really, really long time. Almost everything I own came discounted, thrifted or from eBay. Unsurprisingly, my style is not what you would consider trendy. So it's really hard for me to understand some of the things people wear in the name of fashion.

Today, while on the streets I walked past a lady who was wearing, what I call, MC Hammer pants.Yeap. Right down to the unnecessary voluminous hips to the tapered ankles. I saw it once in a store but I didn't think anyone would actually buy into it. I get that there's been some weird '80s revival going on in the fashion world but that's not even the glamorous part of 80s fashion! Rayban aviators, no problemo. The flouro colours, if I have to. But MC-Hammer-pants?! Jesus. Why don't you just throw in shoulder pads while you're scarring my vision and life?

Another thing that I don't get:

To the two guys I saw walking down Swanston Street yesterday: Actually, all guys of Melbourne. Victoria. Australia. The World. If John Rhys-Meyers doesn't look good in it, chances are, you're not going to either.

The model at American Apparel looks seminally better but that's because of the second layer and the fact that he looks like the bastard child of Seth Green and Breckin Meyer, who I both love unabashedly. Stick to skinny ties, fitted jeans and folded three quarter button down shirts, alright? Alternatively wear vintage tees or check-ed Western shirts. You'll thank me later when the trend passes and there isn't photographic evidence of you indulging in such fashion atrocities.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A year ago, I was marvelling over the progress we've made in developing video-sharing capabilities on the Internet. YouTube had become a verb in our everyday lexicon and Google had just purchased YouTube for a mind-boggling amount of money.

October '07: The observations of a passive YouTube user. YouTube remains what it is. We get the funny animals, music videos and people playing the theme to Mario using a variety of musical instruments. Sure, NBC and other official TV networks may have an official 'director' pages now, but that is hardly ground breaking. Skilled users could have just as easily ripped the very same content from their official website. For the most part, things remained the same. The same grainy low-quality videos existed and proliferated throughout the system.

And then Adobe, of the magical Flash player that YouTube and most video sharing websites utiliz, launched their Moviestar version of flash player. High definition TV quality for the Web? The future never seemed more promising. Yet there was talk of a revolution, but little action. Until now.

Vimeo has taken up the challenge and launched HD quality videos on their site. And the result is nothing short of amazing. For far too long we've come to accept crappy quality videos as the only option. Vimeo is leading the charge in the HD Video Revolution, and it is a hell of a promising start. Here's a wake up call to other video-sharing sites. It's time to bring your A game, fellas. Cause now that we've had a taste of it, it's fair to say that we're not going to expect complacency for much longer.